


Hidden Machinations

by apleasantoceanvoyage



Category: Critical Role (Web Series), Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Ambitious But Rubbish, Amnesiac Mollymauk Tealeaf, Angst, Angst and Feels, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Asexual Relationship, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Beau swears a lot, Book/Movie 1: The Maze Runner, Caleb Widogast-centric, Caleb has no memories, Caleb still speaks zemnian for some reason, Canon Asexual Character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Maze Runner AU, Minor Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Mollymauk is the light of my life, Multi, POV Caleb Widogast, POV Mollymauk Tealeaf, Protective Mollymauk Tealeaf, Queer platonic relationships, author needs to practice writing consistently, but is still sad, dope monk shit, gratuitous use of the word fuck, no beta we die like men, playing fast and loose with the plot of maze runner, practice fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-17
Packaged: 2021-03-13 07:01:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29522643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apleasantoceanvoyage/pseuds/apleasantoceanvoyage
Summary: “Monster is a tricky word,” Caduceus said, meeting Caleb’s eyes with unnerving focus. “There are worse monsters inside these walls than beyond them, I think.”The Maze Runner AU fic no one asked for.
Relationships: Beauregard Lionett & Caleb Widogast, Beauregard Lionett/Yasha, Caduceus Clay & Fjord, Caduceus Clay/Fjord, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Caleb Widogast, Mollymauk Tealeaf & Yasha, Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast, The Mighty Nein & Mollymauk Tealeaf
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	Hidden Machinations

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't read The Maze Runner in forever this was honestly just a random idea I had because I need to work on writing consistently while I'm plotting the rewrite of my book. Will only be drawing vague concepts from the Maze Runner's original story and there will probably not be any OCs and definitely no character crossovers. Please enjoy this tiny slice of nonsense or don't if you don't and I apologize in advance.

The sun was failing. The dimming was gradual at first, a slow darkening that made twilight bleed from morning to evening with no discernible warning, save the clock that ticked away inside Caleb’s head, reminding him of every lost second, every diminished hour. He stared at the slate wall, at the scratches and marks carved into it, row after row, name after name. Stared and wondered if soon it would become too dark to do even that.  
“Yasha made it,” Jester said confidently, expression wavering as Fjord shrugged and chipped away another mark in the stone, as though it didn’t matter. And maybe it didn’t. At that point, they were past wondering. There was no use in worrying over it, after all. Zuala had gone and Yasha had followed. It was easier to pretend they’d never been then to wonder away the brief hours of sunlight, hoping for some sign to scream out otherwise.  
He could’ve sworn he’d heard thunder in the distance the day after they’d gone. The door had shuddered ominously closed when night fell without their return, the heavy crack of stone a death sentence echoed by the rumbling of the clouds. He could’ve sworn it meant something. Meant they’d finally done it. Found a way out and took it, together.  
Yasha made it. Of course she did. And Zuala, and Essek, and Dairon, and Veth—  
Veth.  
Caleb had his own mark for her name. For every name he’d been too afraid to follow. For every life he might’ve saved had he chosen to go with them. A mark for every death he should’ve died, for every body found in some ditch, some gully, atop, beneath, behind some cursed jutting of rock, of stone and mortar and madness. He bore them each beneath his sleeve, carved into his skin in neat, clinical rows. He did not need their names to remember.  
None of them had needed names to begin with, after all.  
Caduceus had been the first to arrive in the grove. Or perhaps he’d always been there. He’d settled in easily, his home mossy and worn and familiar, the only space in their slowly shrinking world that didn’t have some _wrongness_ about it. It was comfortably soft, and he’d made it that way within a matter of weeks. According to him, the structure had already been built upon his waking up. He’d been alone, of course, because someone had to have been, and if it was going to be anyone Caleb was silently relieved that it had been Caduceus. The quiet suited him. Even the isolation, as he told it, seemed nothing more than a comfortable few weeks to get himself situated and ready for guests.  
“Guests?” Beau had said incredulously. “We’re not fucking guests we’re _prisoners_. There’s no way you don’t fucking see that.”  
Caduceus had smiled in that odd way of his. “Anywhere can be a prison. Living’s a prison, if that’s how you want to see it. I don’t think here’s much different than anywhere else. Home’s a perspective, not a place.”  
“And you aren’t afraid?” Caleb had asked him, his eyes never leaving the vague, flicking firelight as it cast its dancing shadows across the faces of the ramshackle group surrounding it.  
Caduceus had shrugged, tilting his head slightly “There’s no reason to be afraid.”  
“Ja,” Caleb replied, smiling in a way that didn’t quite touch his eyes, voice dull with mirthless humor. “except for the monsters outside the walls waiting to kill us.”  
“Monster is a tricky word,” Caduceus said, meeting Caleb’s eyes with unnerving focus. “There are worse monsters inside these walls than beyond them, I think.”  
Caleb dropped his gaze, looking back to the flames. An eerie, discordant _knowing_ settled in his gut. He could remember nothing of his past. Nothing before the day he awoke in the grove, just as they all had, nameless and stripped bare of memory. Veth had been the one to name him. To draw him out of himself and the gnawing panic he couldn’t seem to shake, the dread of _something_ that he couldn’t put a name to. There was something so very _wrong_ with not being able to remember who he was. What he’d done to deserve ending up where he had. But he’d known then, looking into Caduceus’ eyes, that his fate was a deserved one.  
“What are you doing?” He heard a voice snap, causing him to flinch back to awareness. He turned, eyes landing on Beau as she stalked towards the small group that had gathered around the shadowed wall, her eyes locked on Fjord. On the chisel in his hand. To his credit, he only paused a moment, then grit his teeth and continued carving out the mark.  
“She’s not _fucking_ dead,” Beau spat. She pushed past Jester who gave a brief, aborted movement to grab for her, wincing back instead as Beau shoved Fjord away from the wall. “She’ll come back for us. She promised she would.”  
Fjord only shook his head, reaching past her to continue his work. Beau’s hand shot out, faster than Caleb could follow, and twisted his arm sharply, slamming him face-first into the stonework and planting her knee in the small of his back. He dropped the chisel and mallet both, grunting in pain.  
“She’s fucking coming back goddamit,” She snarled, releasing him with a sharp shove and stepping back. She kicked the tools away—punted, rather, which was impressive considering neither were particularly aerodynamic.  
“Beau…” Jester began softly, reaching for her with that same hesitant touch. Beau smacked her hands away, whirling on her.  
“Don’t fucking start,” she said, wiping a hand furiously across her face. She pointed at Fjord. “You tell him to wait another goddamn day. Another fucking _week_. She’s coming back.” She backed away, shoulders shaking. “She promised.”  
Caleb didn’t move as Beau stormed past him, his eyes instead finding Jester’s, who looked at him with a tearful, pleading expression.  
“Ja,” he said quietly, then cleared his throat, speaking up a bit. “Ja, I will go talk to her.” He spared a quick glance to Fjord before turning on his heel and heading after Beauregard.  
There weren’t many places for her to go inside the circle of walls that caged them in. Aside from the maze beyond the confines—the door to which stood gaping open at present like some horrific, toothy maw—there weren’t exactly a surplus of quiet spaces. Beau had longed ago staked the gully and a crooked copse of surrounding trees on the far side of the circle as her own. She claimed it was for meditating, but more often than not Caleb saw her scribbling away in her journal there instead. Or simply sleeping. She was engaged in neither when he finally caught up with her, having taken the long route so as not to catch her in the amidst the throes of her fury.  
“You’re going to hurt your hands,” he said from a little ways off, watching as she drove her fists again and again into a smooth-barked tree. She only scoffed in response, the barest huff of acknowledgment. “Fine, then you are going to hurt the tree and Caduceus will lecture you on the preservation of natural resources for an entire week,” he amended, stepping closer. She let out a growl of frustration, whirling towards him.  
“What the fuck do you want Caleb?”  
He stared at her, unblinking and silent. Absently, his hand drifted to his arm, fingers scratching at the bandages beneath his sleeve. Beau tracked the movement, her expression softening a bit, though with a pinched sort of sorrow rather than regret.  
“Shit,” she muttered. “Look it’s just—” she grimaced. “Everyone just keeps giving up. On the people who have left, sure, but everyone who’s still here. It’s like we don’t even matter. Like morale or hope doesn’t mean shit. I mean, there’s got to be a way out. There’s no way there’s not a way out, right? The wall’s gotta end somewhere.”  
He shifted on his feet, staring at the ground and the faint outline of his shadow the dimming sun cast upon it.  
“We are cannon fodder, Beauregard,” he said finally, wincing at the narrowing of her eyes. “Fjord isn’t like you or Yasha, Dairon… Veth. None of us are, ja? That’s why you are the runners. You’re the ones if—if _any_ of us stood a chance, it would be you. It would be the lot of you, together. The rest of us don’t have that chance.”  
Beau looked unconvinced, a vague hint of disgust in her face as she turned away, undoing the wrappings on her knuckles and stomping down the gully towards the stream.  
“Is that seriously what you all tell yourselves? What, does it make you feel better or some shit?” She crouched down by the water, thrusting her hands in and scooping up water to splash on her face.  
He trailed after her. “Beauregard—”  
“No! Don’t fucking start. It’s an excuse, all of it is. You all just want to hide in here like it’s some cozy little summer home well it _isn’t_. I _know_ you’ve seen it. Christ, Caleb the _sky_ is fucking _shutting down_. You really think we’re safe in here? How long until there’s too many of us to keep living off this fucking circle, huh? We barely have enough resources as it is and whoever is on the other fucking side of this thing is just going to keep sending in more people. One way or another, we’re dead.”  
“You’ve seen it out there,” Caleb said quietly after a heavy pause. “You know what it’s like. Do you think someone like Fjord, someone like Caduceus, someone… someone like _me_ could make it? Honestly?”  
Beau turned her head and studied him, something hard and unreadable in her expression.  
“Well we’re fucked if we don’t try.” She looked away. “We owe it to them. All of them.”  
Caleb opened his mouth to respond only to be cut off by the abrupt, resounding clang of the settlement alarm as it echoed across the grove. Beau leapt to her feet in an instant.  
“She’s back,” she whispered, a grin breaking out across her face. “They’re back they’re fucking back I fucking knew it!”  
Before Caleb could even begin to question the absurdity of that assumption Beau had pushed past him, dashing back towards the central settlement, leaving Caleb little choice to follow. He muttered a curse beneath his breath, running after her, though quite a ways behind as she quickly pulled ahead.  
“Beauregard!” he called, stumbling. “ _Shieße_ , Beaureg—” he grunted, tripping over the uneven ground and underbrush. Struggling to his feet, he pushed on, groaning in frustration as she broke the tree line far ahead of him. He followed, dodging his way through the trees and emerging into the clearing beyond. He slowed his pace slightly, trying to catch his breath as he ran at a pained sort of half-jog towards the settlement center.  
The sight that greeted him was certainly not one he expected.  
A large group of people had gathered around the supply box, talking and shouting and shoving so that he couldn’t actually make out what all the ruckus was about. He caught sight of Beau on the outskirts of the group, rushing up to her and catching her arm.  
“What’s going on?”  
Beau glanced back at him slowly, a dazed, vaguely puzzled expression on her face.  
“Beauregard?” he prompted, huffing in irritation and pushing past her when she didn’t respond. They weren’t due another supply drop for a week at least. Another _guest_ wasn’t scheduled to arrive for at least three times that, with the newest of their group, Marius, having arrived only few days ago. So when he finally made his way through the wall of bodies and stumbled to Caduceus’ side, he was not expecting the man to be crouched before the open hatch of the supply box, speaking in a hushed, soothing voice to the pit below. Caleb stared at the man, who acknowledged him with a slight tilt of his head, eyes locked on something below.  
Caleb followed his gaze, catching sight of a hunched figure in the corner. His first thought was that someone had fallen in and hurt themselves—probably Marius—when the figure shifted, tilting their tear-stained face upward, their red eyes damp and terrified.  
“Empty,” the figure whispered, tangling their clawed fingers in their dark hair. Caleb caught a glimpse of vibrant purple skin, the curve of horns before Caduceus lowered himself carefully down besides the figure. “Empty,” the figure said again, their voice trembling.  
“Empty.”  
“Caduceus?” Caleb said unsurely.  
“They’re the last one,” Caduceus said, so quietly that Caleb was sure he was the only one who heard him.  
“ _Was_?”  
Caduceus looked up, eyes locking on Caleb as he held up a small square of paper.  
“They’re the last one. _Ever._ ”


End file.
